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Thursday, November 27, 2008

Gotta get Liz's brother Ian back from them Family raiders, if the radscorpions ain't got him already. Oh, yesterday I:
- Got into town and wrote a little bit about my plans for January. More on that soon.

- Worked, dealing with the new delivery. I also double-checked the order for the month, observing the new watchword of "caution".

- Was interviewed by a student at lunchtime about the industry and why shops locate themselves where they do (for the same reasons any business does). He was supposed to shout me a coffee in return for 10 minutes of my time. I wound up buying his coffee and talking my entire lunch. Mind you, the latter probably wasn't his fault.

- Got home and read some comics. Batman continued it's shit-festery with the end of the RIP storyline. Honestly, the whole thing has been pretty dire, mainly let down by Daniel's confused storytelling. As for the ending? Limp. Walking Dead and Night Witches were the best of the week so far. I've yet to read the Brubaker double of Cap and DD, nor the latest instalments of Northlanders, Incredible Hercules and Umbrella Academy.

- Played some Fallout, which so far I've been very good about keeping to small bursts of an hour or so.

- Watched the last episode of Stephen Fry in America, which we've enjoyed. It's not exactly in-depth, but it makes for great pre-bedtime viewing.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

How do you manage to keep up? Anyway, yesterday I:
- Trekked back from Greenwich, where Alex and I had spent the previous day as a special birthday surprise! It was really nice, actually, and it was only the buses that kept reminding me that we were, in fact, still in London.

- Lugged our new kitchen table back with us, which we picked up from a market for £35. Such a great find as it's perfect for the limited space we have, both as a 4-seater dining table and also as a work surface.

- Tidied and rearranged the lounge in time for Andrea to arrive, bearing the base for a laksa, which she then cooked in typically excellent style. We had a good catch-up and then walked down to Angel, where I bought a copy of Fallout 3 (after much deliberation) to go with my new Xbox 360 (£110 from ASDA).

- Got home, did some stuff, had a bath, read some comics (boy do I love Scalped) and caught up on my web reading.

- Once Alex's soaps had finished (9pm) I moved in on the lounge, popped Fallout in and started playing. That pretty much took me through until 1am, whereupon I died trying to kill a bunch of guys who were guarding the ruin of an old supermarket. I must say, I'm loving it. I was a big fan of the Fallout games way back when, and indeed Wasteland before them. The post-apocalyptic RPG thing always appealed to me and this new one does an excellent job of recapturing the feel of the earlier chapters. Okay, so it also feels a bit like a re-skinned Oblivion, but that's fine by me. I think it has been a bit mis-marketed though - the Gears of War crowd are going to be bleeding out their eyes with the amount of dialogue and reading material - but it's exactly what I hoped it might be. Good news for me, bad news for productivity.

- Though actually, it's not too bad. The fact that I have gone down the console route rather than upgrading my PC has a number of benefits. Firstly, it means I can play all the new games for far less than it would have cost me to do an upgrade. I'm at the point where a games-ready conversion is essentially going to be a rebuild, but really my PC is fine for 90% of what I need to do. Aside from the odd fan that needs replacing, it's still rock-solid. Secondly, to play a game I need access to the television, which means it can't monopolize my time every night. At least, these are the justifications I tell myself.

- Stumbled to bed, intending to get up early to make the most of this, my last day off of a 5 day stretch.

Hot damn! Two days in a row! Time to reward myself with a day off. Anyway, yesterday I:- Got up early intending to capitalise on the fact that Alex had got to bed late. What a world of early morning possibility!

- Sat on the internet. Like a gigantic sea-sponge immersed in a sewer. Suddenly it wasn't early morning any more.

- Had poached eggs and bacon for breakfast and then we planned out the mammoth task that was Rearranging Our Lounge.

- Rearranged our lounge. Phew!

- Nipped out to Leyland to pick up some tester pots of paint. We're gonna give the lounge a fresh lick. Of paint. Came back via a diversion to the Scolt's Head for a cheeky pint.

- Tested a couple of paints, one of which was unsuitable, but the other of which seemed quite good. Pretty much what we have now, really: a kind of off-white. What do you call that? Eggshell? Beetle Breath? What am I, a decorator?

- Saw the start of the NZ/Scotland game and then walked down to the Orwell to have a quick drink with Alex before she went off to a house-warming (which - as was sort of expected - she is yet to return from around 24 hours later).

- Settled in front of the telly and watched the extras on the [REC] DVD, then the latest Futurama DVD, which was a little underwhelming, to be honest. Meant to watch Swedish vampire flick Let the Right One In, but wound up watching a show about recently deceased comedy producer Geoffrey Perkins.

- Watched a World at War episode which covered Germany to the end of the war. There's a particular relish in Olivier's voice while narrating the destruction of Germany's cities as revenge for the destruction the Germans had wrought. Thankfully, however, the last few episodes' frequent footage of bulldozed piles of bodies has not inured me to the sight.

Saturday, November 08, 2008

Is there a blogging equivalent to ex-lax? Yesterday I:- Spent the morning catching up on the internet. It was, thankfully, still there. I often fantasize about living out in the middle of nowhere. A simple life where my days would be filled with making treehouses for the kids and maybe mending that fence that borders on the Johnson farm. But could I get decent broadband? It's amazing how accustomed I've become to high-speed internet, to the point now where even an 8mb connection is irritating. I have to wait for a quicktime trailer to preload? Ridiculous! Still, I imagine it would just be a case of going cold turkey. How much of it all do I really need to read, after all?

- Popped down to Angel for some breakfast and a wander around the shops. Started reading a new writing book. Did not, however, actually write.

- Came home and did some tidying and then took to what became my main task for the day: getting rid of the sofa. At this point I should address my landlord, who may well be reading. The old sofa has reached the end of its life I'm afraid, Bill! Covers are torn, the inner springs are shot and it's all just a bit grotty now. Luckily last week we picked up a used sofa for free and while not being the most glamorous piece of new furniture, it's in good shape, is comfortable, and actually gives us a bit more flexibility in terms of lounge layout. We'll leave it when we move out.

- So anyway, the sofa. The sofa we have had is huge. It's about 7.5 feet long and about 3 feet wide. There's no way I was going to be able to get it out the door without moving half the furniture in the house, and even then I had no way of disposing of it. So I took it apart, which took about 3 hours start to finish (allowing for dust-settling breaks). All the covering and foam needed to be cut off, then the springs all had to be removed before I could get to unscrewing/unbolting the frame. But I got there in the end and once everything had been cleaned up and the new sofa had been put in place it was all looking spiffy!

- Watched Brit horror flick Donkey Punch, which was an effective little thriller of spiralling circumstances. Not one to watch with grandma, but good if you like this kind of thing. Speaking of horror flicks, by the way, do yourself a favour and check out the Spanish film [REC]. I just got the DVD, which I'm looking forward to getting stuck into. It's a quick (75 min), claustrophobic zombie movie that's a nice shot of andrenalised horror. There's a US remake on its way, which may or may not be pants, but I can give the original a big thumbs-up.

- Watched a World at War episode which covered the Holocaust, which put me in a suitably miserable mood before bed.